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Is 40 the New 60?

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Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#341

Post by ozim »

jasode wrote: post #73
SkipperCat wrote: post #33

40 is not the new 60. Not even close. At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done and my pay has been better than ever. I'm 52 now and the trend has only gotten better. Why? Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, I understood of the whole business process and I had the maturity to deal with people in a productive way. You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer. The onl…

>At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done [...] Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, The blog post isn't about self-reported cognitive ability getting stronger (or not declining). It's about the job marketplace . Maybe it's instructive to compare/contrast different professional careers that depend on mental abilities and how age affects marketability: - computer programming :…

Because let's face it: writing code is seen as digging trenches.

I hear all the time from fellow developers how important we are. We get a lot inside jokes how non-devs don't understand things and all the self importance of devs that comes with it.

I have a friend that is hanging a lot out with musicians/artists where they do the same thing as devs - thinking they are important.

While developers earn more than musicians - a lot of musicians are just menial workers performing what they are told - coding is still menial work to be performed. So it is implementing other people ideas or they can just get another violinist.

Surgeon while is quite physical and menial, everyone agrees it is occupation that deals with life and death - most developers are nowhere close to such responsibility.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#342

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #340
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a 25 year old genius developer can be as good as a 40 year old average developer and better than a 40 year old subpar developer. However, geniuses are, by definition, extremely rare, so it should be self-evident that the heuristic is generally valid.

'Won't find' vs 'may rarely find'. How about we just assess each individual without going in with any prejudice based on their age?

I already do. But that doesn't have anything to do with the validity of the heuristic.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#343

Post by terryf »

brandall10 wrote: post #325
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll find a lack of social intelligence in the entire age range, but younger candidates seem to get more of a pass than older ones (or perhaps because the senior candidates have more rope to hang themselves with). Over negativity about past employers is indeed a warning sign (though some negativity is fine, like if you ask the question “what did you dislike about your past employer? “), but pessimism in small quant…

"You’ll find a lack of social intelligence in the entire age range" But this is specifically an issue more prevalent in older candidates, and is in large part the reason for a pass. We pass on younger candidates as well for this reason, but most prevalently for skill. "If they can’t list the bad as well as good about some tech, they probably don’t really understand it." I literally just said we consider this a positi…

Really, what you are saying is 100% spot on, but seems to be misunderstood for some reason.

If presented with a difficult problem, there are people that go "nah, that can't be done, here's a long list of reasons why".

There are also people that go "That's going to be difficult, but maybe we can try A, B or C and I recall reading about this cool new tech that could perhaps help"

Be open to change and open to accepting that new things could be good and interesting.

I'm 43. Hiring engineers. Working with some 50+ engineers that are the absolute best I've ever worked with.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#344

Post by ywei3410 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #282
no-s wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20x 1 year of experience That person has 20 years of experience in gaining short experiences. Something the 25 year old prodigy can’t have. Skippercat was just stating a fact. I feel the way you expressed your opinion reflects some intrinsic ageism. Bigotry often seeks a plausible rationale for justification.

No I'm arguing against ageism. I'm over 35 myself. I'm just realistic that having been alive a long time doesn't automatically infer wisdom like people think it does. Someone who's spent 20 years not really learning anything or bettering themselves can be behind someone who's spent five years working hard. They said: > at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, I understood of the whole business process an…

But the original comment has specifically talked about the quality of the experience is important rather than just the quantity.

> I worked with someone my age who only strong skills are a large enterprise storage system. He is a dinosaur and his future is limited.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#346

Post by ozim »

stooliepidgin wrote: post #297
jnorthrop wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment. I was 51 when I last applied for a job at a new company. Initially I was getting very little interest in my resume. Then I cut out the first 10 years of my career from my resume (and LinkedIn), and downgraded the oldest position listed from a Senior Lead to just a developer -- essentially making me appear 40 instead of 50. Within a couple of weeks I started getting responses. And it is no…

Ageism is real. It's not some sour grapes of under-performers who let their skills decline, or move or think at a dotard pace. It's essentially "We don't want anyone old because old = bad, new = good."

I think it is a lot about under-performers that want to hang onto their "years of experience" as a selling point and being angry that there is not much of a market for "years of experience" only.

Maybe they were not under-performers 10-15 or 20 years ago, but if someone gives 20 pages of resume and most of it happened in 90's I would not be interested. Because it is quite easy to see such person is hanging onto his past performance like Al Bundy to his 4 touchdowns in high school.

If someone would be 50yrs old or even 60 but his last couple of years are taking most of resume and they did interesting work at that age I would be curious to talk to such person.

It is not that they would need to have latest frameworks or libraries listed on the CV. It is more about if they did meaningful work in last year and not that they did meaningful work 20 years ago and now they are just hanging around doing whatever.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#347

Post by PeterWhittaker »

My anecdata is returning to full time work at 54, after ~20 years consulting. To keep a long story short, my development years were 25-30 years ago, I knew the owner from consulting, and was working through his company on another gig. He knew I had some spare time and asked if I could fill a gap on contract. That led to converting to “wage slavery” with an excellent base salary, profit sharing, and an equity share in the two products I’m working on.

So after 20 years of writing governance documents, doing threat risk assessments and privacy impact assessments, occasionally writing SELinux policy, and some product management like work, I’m doing full stack development on the software product (node, React, ONgdb) and writing C, bash, and SELinux on the hardware product.

I also do customer needs analysis, custom development for them, and train them. And I do all of the demos.

Perhaps it’s my field, perhaps it’s a unique skill set (we ICAM/CDS people are rare), perhaps it’s personality (curious, enthusiastic, measured). I dunno.

Now 56, I foresee doing this for a few years more. The pace can be insane (hey, startup, or at least small consulting firm turning itself into a product company) but the work extraordinarily rewarding (when you ship a CDS product that has the experts asking “how did you do that?” it feels really good; when you show your clients an IRM that does things no one else does, ditto), and I work with really good friends (friends I’d never worked with before but knew from weekend activities (off-roading)).

It can happen. I just don’t know how rare it is. (Hey! I may be a unicorn!!! :-})

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#348

Post by chrisseaton »

ywei3410 wrote: post #344
chrisseaton wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm arguing against ageism. I'm over 35 myself. I'm just realistic that having been alive a long time doesn't automatically infer wisdom like people think it does. Someone who's spent 20 years not really learning anything or bettering themselves can be behind someone who's spent five years working hard. They said: > at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, I understood of the whole business process an…

But the original comment has specifically talked about the quality of the experience is important rather than just the quantity. > I worked with someone my age who only strong skills are a large enterprise storage system. He is a dinosaur and his future is limited.

They said you wouldn't find some combinations qualities in younger people at all.

> You won't find all of those in a 25 year old developer

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#349

Post by chrisseaton »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #342
chrisseaton wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Won't find' vs 'may rarely find'. How about we just assess each individual without going in with any prejudice based on their age?

I already do. But that doesn't have anything to do with the validity of the heuristic.

Applying heuristics against people using personal characteristics they cannot control like their age is harfmul.

Re: Is 40 the New 60?

#350

Post by Tarucho »

ozim wrote: post #341
jasode wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At 40, I've done some of the best work I've ever done [...] Its because at 40, I had a much deeper understanding of the tech, The blog post isn't about self-reported cognitive ability getting stronger (or not declining). It's about the job marketplace . Maybe it's instructive to compare/contrast different professional careers that depend on mental abilities and how age affects marketability: - computer programming :…

Because let's face it: writing code is seen as digging trenches. I hear all the time from fellow developers how important we are. We get a lot inside jokes how non-devs don't understand things and all the self importance of devs that comes with it. I have a friend that is hanging a lot out with musicians/artists where they do the same thing as devs - thinking they are important. While developers earn more than musici…

Ok, but dev managers are also managing people digging trenches, not people in life and death situations, and they don´t face the same problems devs face. And they tend to be more "self important" than devs.
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